Armour Black
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: [Digimon Next, Shou-centric] The day he accepted that no-one else was going to wait for Norun and keep her promise alive was the day he lost. Though he'd been lost for some time before that, slipping away into his own little darkness...


**A/N:** Written for the General Round by Round Competition on the DFC (link's in profile), round 1: Write about a day for a char where everything goes wrong. The result can be anything from annoying to apocalyptic.

Canon with Digimon Next and containing spoilers as well if you haven't read past the Knight's background. Especially the last scene (spoilers I mean – but I think all this can be found on Shou's wiki page anyway).

* * *

**Armour Black**

He was waiting at the park again.

It was a foolish hope he was clinging to. He knew that. He was starting to accept it. But he couldn't let it go. Couldn't stop waiting for the day she, Norun, would return again. And they could play together and talk like they used to. They could imagine Digimon were living, breathing, creatures together: their family, their friends – an irreplaceable part of themselves.

But everyone was forgetting that. Even people like Tsurugi whose voice had been louder than his own when Norun had asked them that day. "What are Digimon to you?"

She'd disappeared after that day. The rest of them would meet and wait for her anyway, but then even Tsurugi stopped coming: Tsurugi who Shou'd thought would never give up on a friend.

He'd made excuses at first, saying to himself Tsurugi had something important to do, had overslept, was feeling sick – but he could only do that for so long, and it was too easy to feel abandoned by him as well. Why not? After all, everyone else had abandoned him. Moved on to other things. Forgotten what was important.

Sometimes, he thought even Norun had abandoned him, that she'd been the first. But everyone else he still saw from time to time, saw them get further away from him, behind barriers that sprung up from the shadowed ground. Not Norun though; to most of his classmates it was like she'd never existed in the first place.

So he waited for her, waited because he had no idea where to look for her. Waited while he kept her wish alive, the wish she'd told all of them once they'd answered her question for her. She'd wanted them to always love their Digimon, like the friends and family they'd said they were to them.

But times were changing and the act of waiting in the park had lost a little more of its meaning when he accepted Tsurugi would not be coming again – and Norun probably wouldn't be coming back either.

But he couldn't bring flowers, rest them against the tree, or stop waiting. His Digimon Mini hung from his belt: the only friend he still had left but one who couldn't talk to him, or guide him. Still a friend though: a friendship he'd promised he'd keep alive…even if no-one else would do so with him.

A bell rang in the distance but he didn't move. He was already late for school, but school was becoming a place he wanted to be less and less.

**.**

He got a detention, but that wasn't the worst news he got that day. A new battling system had come out for the Digimon Minis, and most of his classmates were busy obsessing with it. None of them noticed how quickly the Digimon transformed into weapons for fighting with each other: things like toy swords or water balloons that could be tossed away once they burst.

Even if it still wasn't possible to kill a Digimon in battle, no-one thought how they might hurt being used for petty fights. And people were playing for _fun_ – fighting for no good reason except they _could_.

He was seething by the time he walked out of detention, but at the same time he felt utterly powerless. It was easy not to participate in such battles himself; it was easy to keep Peckmon away. It wasn't so easy to accept the rest of the world walking down that different path though.

He'd known that was going to happen. They'd all known that, when Norun had told them their wish, and he'd promised to hold on to it. But still, it angered him. Frustrated him. The idea of Digimon was moving away from what it had been born to be.

Just a few years ago, the Digimon had been the friend of every young boy and girl. That was before Digimon Battling had been invented – and now, with the new method, it seemed even more people would forget to think of them as creatures that could live, breathe and feel pain in their own, if imaginary, world.

A few people had stopped to ask him to play. Most hadn't bothered. People he'd played with when he was younger remembered enough about him to consider it a lost cause, perhaps. He might have been more sure if Tsurugi hadn't been one of those few to stop him, to ask him to play. Soccer first, it was. Then the new Digimon Battle. Shou's refusal had been more venomous the second time around, and the other boy had seemed rather taken aback.

Tsurugi was someone Shou had thought would never descend to such a level, but he'd apparently had. Then again, it wasn't so hard to believe after waiting days for him under the tree, so they could wait together for a mutual friend.

It could easily have turned into an argument, if Shou had raised the issue. He hadn't. He'd just walked away from it all, taking the lonely path home. A lonely path to a lonely home: it seemed fitting, somehow. It seemed like everyone everywhere was growing away from him. His family as well as his friends.

Only Peckmon, inside the Digimon Mini, was still the same. Shou paused a moment under a tree to look at the avatar within the Digimon Mini before continuing on home.

**.**

He got distracted on the way. A bunch of older kids were picking on a couple of younger ones. One was pleading and in tears. All had Digimon Minis with them. The youngsters' ones had been snatched away by the elders, and Shou watched one tossed into the dirt like trash.

'Stop that!' he shouted, his blood burning and heart telling him to run, to push that other guy into the dirt like he'd thrown the Digimon Mini and see how he'd like it. But he'd only gone a few involuntary paces before another was blocking his path. He finished his statement anyway. 'How would you feel if someone tossed _you_ around!'

Shou was older and taller than the two little kids, but still smaller than the bullies. He wasn't the sort who had ever enjoyed sports, and usually it was Tsurugi jumping headlong into fights and Shou waiting at the sidelines with the bandages. But everyone had something they couldn't leave alone, something they had to fight for.

And treating Digimon like trash was something he couldn't – wouldn't – accept.

Those bullies, those older kids, saw that. They saw the fire in his eyes. They accepted the fight – but not fists because that wouldn't mean nearly as much as the alternative. They offered a battle with their Digimon.

Shou hesitated a bit. But it wasn't a fight for no good reason; it was defending something, something important. He accepted the fight.

And they grabbed the Digimon Mini out of his hands before he could react and crushed it underfoot.

**.**

He carried the mangled mess that had been his Digimon Mini home with him and locked the door to his room and yanked the curtains closed so the room was sealed in darkness. Someone might have called after him, or knocked. He didn't hear, or care. A Digimon Mini was more than a home for the Digimon; it was the source of their data, their form. They developed their own traits and personalities depending on how they were raised. And once a Mini was destroyed, the Digimon inside was gone forever.

Peckmon was as good as dead, and those boys – they'd crushed him without even thinking about what they'd done. His body shook: a mix of shock, anguish and suppressed rage – supressed because he felt even more useless than he had before. He'd been too slow to react; he'd barely noted the Mini gone from his hands before it splintered and broke under that heel.

He didn't know how long he'd stayed in his room like that, head bowed and resting on clenched fists. He didn't know when the darkness of his room had turned in to something else. He just knew that, when he finally looked up, the walls and ceiling and desk were all gone, and the shattered remains of his Digimon Mini was in grey clawed hands.

And those grey clawed hands belonged to an old bearded man with red wings and a shawl of purple and red and gold.

He could never remember, afterwards, what exactly happened there. He did remember his eyes burning from the tears he'd shed. He remembered the Digimon Mini being repaired somehow, and transformed so it was coated black instead. He remembered being told it was the key to another world, the world where the Digimon truly lived. He remembered seeing Peckmon again, alive and tangible for the first time. He remembered hearing Norun's name again, and his heart being filled with something: desire. He remembered accepting an armour and a mask and a new name to go with an old promise he'd made not so long ago.

And he'd remember, when that darkness was, some time later, broken by the light, selling his soul to the Demon Lord.


End file.
